Welcome to the first 'Dinosaurs of China' newsletter!

Dinosaurs are coming to Nottingham in 2017. We are very excited about this massive event. It's going to be ground shaking in more ways than one!

The show will run July-Oct 2017 with the main
exhibition at Wollaton Hall and a second exhibition at Lakeside Arts.

Read on for a chance toMeet the dinosaurs includingSinraptor and friends. Each newsletter, we will reveal another dinosaur that will be included in the exhibition. Watch this space for fantastic facts on the wonderful exhibits you will be able to see next year!

We're on the countdownto bringing a uniquedinosaur exhibition to Nottingham in the
summer of 2017.

Featuring fossils and specimens never before seen outside of Asia, the exhibition includes some of the best preserved dinosaur fossils from anywhere in
the world, not just the bones, but also soft parts including skin and feathers.
Many of the species are new to science, only discovered and named in the last
20 years, and some as recently as 2015.

One of the highlights of the exhibition will be the Gigantoraptor, which at 4
metres high and 8 metres long is the largest feathered dinosaur ever found.
TheGigantoraptor will be accompanied by numerous other dinosaur
specimens, such as the four-winged flying Microraptor, a close relative of Velociraptor
which has wing feathers on its arms and legs.

Artist's impressions of the dinosaurs featured in
the exhibition are credited toZhao
Chuang.

Visit to China

Representatives from Wollaton
Hall and the University of Nottingham visited Beijing in March 2016 to make
early plans for Dinosaurs of China Ground Shakers to Feathered Flyers.

"Our primary destination was the
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), a hub for
dinosaur research in China and home to the Paleozoological Museum of China
(PMC). Here, we inspected the bird-like dinosaur fossils - exquisitely preserved
with feathers - that will be journeying to Nottingham in 2017.

We also visited the IVPPs
off-site storage facility and workshop to the north of Beijing, where we
encountered the spectacular mounted dinosaur skeletons that will be part of the
exhibitionand the huge wooden crates theyll be travelling in!

To gather stories for the
exhibition we met the palaeontologists who described and named many of the
dinosaurs in the exhibition.

Professor Xu Xing (pictured below) is a world-renowned dinosaur
expert who has studied many feathered dinosaurs. He told us how he discovered
the mighty Gigantoraptor!

We also met the director of the PMC, Professor
Wang Yuan (Pictured below). His enthusiasm inspired some exciting ideas for the exhibition and
we left Beijing assured that Dinosaurs of China is going to be spectacular!"

Meet the dinosaurs!

Gigantoraptor

Size:8m long, 4m high

Diet: Uncertain - possibly an omnivore (eats meat and plants)

Named by:Xu, Tan, Wang, Zhao and Tan (2007)

Place of discovery: Erlian basin, Inner Mongolia, China

Age: Late Cretaceous (Iren Dabasu Formation), ~80 million years ago (the exact age is uncertain, but older than 70 million years ago and younger than 86 million years ago)Classification: Gigantoraptor belongs to the Oviraptorosauria, a group of two-legged dinosaurs with bird-like beaks and feathers.

Description:Gigantoraptoris a large dinosaur with a relatively short tail, long neck, long arms and legs, and was covered with bird-like feathers.Gigantoraptoris the largest example of its kind and the largest dinosaur with bird-like feathers.

Classification: Sinraptor belongs to
group of dinosaurs called the Allosauroidea, so it is closely related to the
well-known North American Allosaurus.
Despite its name, Sinraptor is not
closely related to raptor-type dinosaurs such as Velociraptor.

Description:Sinraptor is a large two-legged super-predator with a 90 cm long skull full of
sharp teeth. It has sharp curved claws on its fingers and toes for catching and
killing prey, and a long tail to help it balance. At over 7 metres long it is
one of the largest predatory dinosaurs ever discovered in China.

Reference:Currie, P.M and Zhao, X.-J. (1994). A new
carnosaur (Dinosauria, Theropoda) from the Jurassic of Xinjiang, People's
Republic of China. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 30(10-11):2037-2081

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